Origin of the Name "Jehovah"

Claude Mariotti wrote a nice post on the origin of the name Jehovah from the original YHWH as the personal name of God in the OT. Devout Jews avoid saying YHWH (pronounced Yahweh) out of honor for God, replacing it with either Adonai (Lord) or Hashem (the name). In the Hebrew Bible, the vowels from Adonai are transposed onto the divine name YHWH to remind the reader to say Adonai instead of Yahweh. This results in the Hebrew spelling YeHoWaH, although it is never pronounced that way. Modern English Bibles normally translate YHWH with LORD, Adonai with Lord, and Elohim with God.

What Dr. Claude pointed out that I was not aware of was that Jehovah was not used as a transliteration of YHWH until 1278 in the work of a Spanish monk.

Of course, you all immediately saw the significance of that date: If Jehovah was not in use during the 11th century (the first Crusade), then there is a mistake in one of the final scenes of the otherwise inerrant and inspired Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. One of the clues to avoid the traps protecting the Holy Grail involved stepping on the letters in Jehovah to avoid falling to certain death. My faith in Steven Spielberg is now destroyed forever.

Bible Translation Quotes

I came across some good quotes on the nature of Bible translation as I was preparing to lecture on the subject for my Bible Interpretation classes:

“If one translates a verse literally, he is a liar; if he adds thereto, he is a blasphemer, and a slanderer!” (Rabbi Judah, b. Kiddushin 49a, quoted in HTPAT, Fee and Strauss)

“Let them not drag me into court if the text does not agree with the original word for word, for, try as you may, it cannot be done.” (Erasmus, Apologia 170:20-1)

"You are urged therefore to read with good will and attention, and to be indulgent in cases where, despite our diligent labor in translating, we may seem to have rendered some phrases imperfectly. For what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language. Not only this work, but even the law itself, the prophecies, and the rest of the books differ not a little as originally expressed." (Preface to Sirach, ca. 200 BC)

“I must let the literal words go and try to learn how the German says that which the Hebrew expresses… Whoever would speak German must not use Hebrew style. Rather he must see to it – once he understands the Hebrew author – that he concentrates on the sense of the text, asking himself, “Pray tell, what do the Germans say in such a situation?” … Let him drop the Hebrew words and express the meaning freely in the German he knows. (Martin Luther, commenting on translating the Old Testament into German, quoted in HTPAT, Fee and Strauss)

And we can't omit the Italian proverb "Traduttore traditore" ("the translator is a traitor.")

The picture: Acts 15:22-24 in Codex Laudanius, a parallel Greek/Latin manuscript, 6th century. Note the scribal correction in the line fourth from the bottom: the original says etaran, but the corrector changed it to etaraxan (they troubled). Also note the faint lettering in the background, which is probably text on the other side of the page that has bled through.

Come on in, you wounded Greeklings

For all my Greek students, here's a post I read over at Dave Black Online (originally from Laudator Temporis Acti):

After the first three weeks of the beginning Greek class, 20 percent of the students are unfortunately conked, casualties of the masculine nouns of the first declension. Others are DOA thanks to the pronoun autos. They find that the autos monster can mean three altogether different things ("him/her/it/them," "-self," or "same"), depending on both its case and its position in a sentence. Students do withdraw from an introductory Greek class before they taste Plato or the Gospels, these bored, annoyed, and exhausted ninteen-year-olds, those very prospects who you once hoped would go on to Thucydides—and perhaps be one of the 600 each year in America who still major in Classics. They slide now across the hall to squeeze into the university's over-enrolled Theory of Walking, Rope Climbing, and Star Trek and the Humanities, which will assuage and assure them that they are, all in all, pretty nice kids, classes that will offer the veneer of self-esteem but will guarantee that they will probably lose what little sense of real accomplishment they had carried within to begin with. You can nearly hear those doctors of therapy, those professors of recuperation at the lecture-hall door: "Come on in, you wounded Greeklings. It's not your fault. They had no business subjecting you to all that rote; we do things a lot differently here. Relax, sit back, breathe deeply, and tell us how you feel."

The picture: First column of the Gospel of Luke, from codex Sinaiticus (ca. AD 350).

SBL Survey

The Society of Biblical Literature (an association of biblical scholars to which I belong) is putting together a website on biblical studies aimed at laypeople. It might end up being a good resource for students. To get it started, they are asking for input on this survey. It should only take a few minutes to fill out, and it will help them make decisions about what to include on the site.

Twitter Ven Diagram

This is especially for my friends who tweet and those who read my blog on facebook. I wonder where blogging would fit in? We might have to add a fourth circle, labelled "delusional."

Thanks to Leon for the diagram.

Book of Acts Wordle

A wordle of the book of Acts. I fed in the text of the NASB, then did a find and replace to get the most common verbs in the same tense. Like all wordles, the size of the text shows the relative frequency of the word in the text. From wordle.net.

New Family Picture!

Front row: Anna, 5 (soon to be adopted); Caleb, 6; Andrew, 5.

Middle row: Ian, 8; Barbara, 27 (or at least she still looks like it); Gary, 41; Harley, 6 (soon to be adopted).

Back row: Nathan, 13; Daniel, 9; Josiah, 14.

We took these pictures recently for our annual Christmas picture. As usual, my wife bought me a new coffee mug with the picture wrapped around it. I always like handing the mug to the baristas at Starbucks and getting their reaction: "Is this your family? How beautiful!"

Herod Remembered

Herod wanted to be remembered for something else.

He wanted to be remembered as the man of influence - friend of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Augustus. He wanted to be remembered as a political prodigy: governor of Galilee by age 25, Roman governor of Coele-Syria, tetrarch of Judea. He wanted to be remembered as "King of the Jews" - a title bestowed on him by a vote of the Roman Senate, despite the fact that he was neither royal nor Jewish. He wanted to be remembered as a successful commander: he defeated the brigand Ezekias in his youth, and he commanded a Roman legion to reclaim Israel from the Parthian empire.

Herod wanted to be remembered for his public works. He had a thousand Levites trained as stone masons to totally refurbish the Temple. He built aqueducts, baths, fortifications, hippodromes, theatres, amphitheatres and gymnasiums, not only in Israel but in other nations. He built a shrine to Augustus and allowed a statue of himself to be erected in another temple - not something that endeared him to his Jewish subjects. He built the port and city of Caesarea Maritima, still an amazing feat.

Herod wanted to be remembered for his generosity towards his subjects. He twice reduced taxes, once by one-third and once by one-fourth. During a famine, Herod sold the silver in his palace to provide food for his people.

Herod wanted to be remembered for his protection of Jews throughout the Roman Empire. Because of Herod's influence with Augustus, Jews throughout the Empire gained official protection: they could not be compelled to appear in court on the Sabbath; they were exempt from having to participate in Roman religious rituals; and shipments carrying their annual head-tax to the Temple were protected by Roman law and Roman might.

But Herod is remembered for none of these things by most people. Instead, Herod is remembered only for how he responded to the baby Messiah. His brutality in killing the baby boys of Bethlehem was unfortunately entirely consistent with his character. Although Herod killed many, those who could make a more legitimate claim to kingship than Herod were his special targets. He killed most of the remnants of the previous royal dynasty, the Hasmoneans, including his own wife and sons. It is not surprising that Herod would also try to kill the offspring of an even older dynasty, the Son of David.

By the way, don't get your Herods confused. Herod the Great was king of Israel (40-4 BC), and is famous for trying to kill the baby Jesus (Matt 2:16). Herod Antipas, his son, was tetrarch of Galilee (4 BC - AD 39), and is famous for executing John the Baptist (Matt 14:3-12) and interrogating Jesus (Luke 23:6-12). Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, ruled over Israel (AD 37-44), and is famous for executing James the son of Zebedee and being eaten by worms (Acts 12). Four other family member show up in the NT: Archelaus, ethnarch of Judea, son of Herod the Great (4 BC-AD6, Matt 2:22); Herodias, granddaughter of Herod the Great and wife of Herod Philip and Herod Antipas (Matt 14:1-12); Herodias' daugher; and Herod Agrippa II, tetrarch of Iturea (Acts 25:13-26:32).

The picture: a coin minted under Herod the Great.

Shroud Discovery in Jerusalem

Archeologists have found the remains of a leper from the early first century and his burial shroud in Jerusalem (see also this video at Ben Witherington's blog). In first-century Jerusalem, bodies were normally interred in a family tomb wrapped in a shroud; then, a year later, the bones were placed in a small ossuary (or bone box) and reinterred in the tomb. This means that shrouds were unlikely to remain in the tomb. But this man was never placed in an ossuary; archeologists speculate that the family decided not to reenter the tomb because of the man's leprosy.

There are several interesting details about the find. DNA tests showed that the man had both Hansen's disease and tuberculosis. When the Bible uses the word "leprosy," is is using the generic term for a wide range of skin diseases, and does not necessarily refer to Hansen's disease - but this man had Hansen's disease.

The leper's shroud was in two pieces - one for the head, and one for the body. This matches the burial practice for both Lazarus (John 11:44) and Jesus (John 20:5-6). This gives another reason to doubt the genuineness of the Shroud of Turin (the supposed burial cloth of Jesus), since it was a single cloth, not separate head and body cloths.

The leper's shroud was a simple weave of wool and linen. Although some scholars are pointing out that this is another difference from the Shroud of Turin, my first thought was wondering why they used an unkosher cloth. Mixing any two kinds of cloth was forbidden in the Torah (Lev 19:19), and a linen-wool weave was specifically forbidden (Deut 22:11).

The picture: a diagram of the "Shroud Tomb" showing where the remains and shroud were found.

Augustine on Greek

Last in my series of quotes about learning Greek:

"But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy? I do not yet fully know. . . ." "Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed, as it were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For not one word of it did I understand, and to make me understand I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and punishments..."

-Augustine, Confessions, 1.12.19-1.14.23

The picture: title page of Erasmus' Lucubrationes, 1516; Augustine is at middle right.